You may not be sold yet. I still expect some bad stretches, particularly when injuries begin to thin the lineup.

But nobody’s taking those eight points away. Those are in the bank. And the season is five-per-cent over.

Now on with the Morning Skate…

The home team (with ‘air quotes’)

When a team that ought to be bad is getting good results, it’s tempting to call them “lucky” — the beneficiaries of good bounces. The statistically-minded might call these results “unsustainable”. They’ll tell you to ignore the scores and instead pay attention to the “underlying numbers” that show you the real team.

So let’s do that.

The Canucks’ Corsi percentage after four games is 53.82%, seventh in the NHL. Only six teams have been generating a higher percentage of shot attempts at even-strength. Of course, spending two hours trying to come back while the other team protects a lead tends to help the Corsi, and that’s exactly what the Canucks were doing over their first three games. Their Corsi was best in the league until last night, when coincidentally they got their first lead of the season.

But it’s not like the Canucks are getting all the bounces. PDO measures a combination of shooting percentage and save percentage, with 100.0 being completely average. The Canucks’ PDO is 101.9, which puts them ninth in a 30-team league. Eight teams are shooting and saving at a better clip than the Canucks, and there would be more if their goaltending wasn’t so good, because their shooting percentage sucks (7.2%).

When looking at these stats, four games is not what the statisticians might call a large “sample size.” But if you want to argue at this point that the Canucks are pushing their luck and due for a crash, you’re going to have a hard time doing it with data.

Ed Willes has an interesting theory in today’s column. He says the league has only two kinds of teams: playoff teams and young teams.

OK, it’s still early but when you study the 2016-17 NHL landscape, it seems the league is divided into two camps: playoff teams and young teams. No one is truly wretched. No one is truly dominant. There are just some pretty good teams. And then there’s a whole bunch of teams who’ve committed to building through the draft.

Your Vancouver Canucks, of course, fall into the latter group. But where do they stand among those teams?

The way Ed sees it, the Canucks’ success this season really depends on their ability to take advantage of all those other rebuilding teams that haven’t quite figured it out yet.

Trollin’ the Pacific

The San Jose Sharks got another crack last night at the team that beat them in the Stanley Cup final. I had a good time before the game reading quotes from the San Jose players, many of whom were trying to get us to believe it was just another game. It reminded me of the Canucks heading into Boston for “Game 8” in 2012, which we all know was not just another game. So I went into the archives and compared some of the Sharks’ 2016 pre-game quotes with some of the Canucks’ 2012 pre-game quotes:

The Coach

“Well, you know, unless they have changed the rules and we go into Boston and we win and they give us the Cup, it’s another two points out of an 82-game schedule.” — Alain Vigneault, 2012

“I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what the emotions will be until I get in there.” — Peter DeBoer, 2016

The Fun-Loving Forward

“It’s going to be a real fun game to have another crack at them,” — Alex Burrows, 2012

“It’s another game to us. It’s obviously the team we lost the Stanley Cup to, but it’s still another two points that we need. I don’t think we need to put a whole lot more into that game other than we need the win.” — Kevin Bieksa, 2012

“I don’t really think about what happened. You can’t do anything about it, so I don’t really think about it. I mean, it’s just another game.” — Brent Burns, 2016

The Honest Guy

“It’s a team that we all want to beat badly and I think we want to try and prove that we are just as good as they are.” — Cory Schneider, 2012

“There’s always the nerves and that kind of thing coming into a game, but I think for us we have something to prove, that we still belong there, still deserve to be there, belong as one of the best teams in the league. To prove that you’ve got to beat the best.” — Paul Martin, 2016

It must have hurt for the Sharks, who took a 2-0 lead into the third period and then allowed three unanswered goals in an eight-minute span to lose 3-2.

The Edmonton Oilers are one of those other Canadian teams on the podium with the Canucks, after a 3-1 win over the Blues last night in Edmonton. But you have to think ex-Oiler Nail Yakupov enjoyed bagging the game’s first goal:

Both Southern California teams got their first wins last night, with the Anaheim Ducks prevailing 3-2 in Philadelphia and the Los Angeles Kings downing Dallas 4-3 in overtime at home.

In the Ducks-Flyers game, old friend Dale Weise earned himself a visit with the Department of Player Safety for this hit on Korbinian Holzer:

Not bad, Antoine, but we’ll let George Clooney show you how they do it in Hollywood:

The Calgary Flames remain poor. They lost 4-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes last night, and nobody seems to be clicking with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan. They were expected to try Alex Chiasson on that line last night, but it turned out to be Matthew Tkachuk. That only lasted a period before Micheal Ferland got his turn. Keep trying, Flames.

Canadian club

The Toronto Maple Leafs are still hanging around above the playoff line despite a 3-2 loss to Minnesota in which they were victimized by… Zac Dalpe!

The former Canuck tied the game early in the third and now has three points in four games to go with a 56% Corsi close. Anyone still think Linden Vey is vastly better than Dalpe? He’s currently playing in Stockton.

A photo posted by melindacurrey (@melindacurrey) on Oct 19, 2016 at 5:41pm PDT

Don’t forget it’s Heritage Classic weekend in Winnipeg. The big outdoor game goes Sunday afternoon between the Jets and Oilers. In a nod to Winnipeg hockey heritage this week, they dusted off the old portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that used to hang in Winnipeg Arena and hoisted it onto the side of a restaurant:

Last time I saw a portrait of the Queen that big on the wall of a restaurant, I was eating a Breakfast Bunwich aboard the Queen of Esquimalt.

In other sports…

Good scoop by the Sun’s Rob Shaw today, who revealed that the WHL quietly persuaded the B.C. government to pass an order exempting the league’s six B.C. clubs from paying players the minimum wage. It’s a contentious issue, with a class-action lawsuit currently being lined up by Canadian junior hockey players.

Captain material

This Vine of an upset Swedish player smashing the glass at the players bench with his stick has been making the rounds:

Fredric Weigel got a 10-minute misconduct and his coach sent him to the showers. But the underreported part of this story is that Weigel’s team, Sodertalje, was trailing 3-0 when the incident occurred midway through the second period. They came back to win the game 4-3 in overtime.

Weigel is an associate captain, and apparently one of those leaders who knows how to pick his moments. I say they take that “A” off his jersey and replace it with a “C.”

Gamer

Valeri Nichushkin, who has 22 penalty minutes in 166 career NHL games, is playing in the KHL this year. He just took on 6-4, 254-pound goon Evgeny Artyukhin in a fight.

Not a bad effort. Shame about the uppercut.

Bye bye Blue Jays

Last year, when the Blue Jays were playing the Kansas City Royals in the ALCS, I dropped by the home of some family friends. Ian answered the door wearing a Royals cap.

Interesting. I didn’t know many Royals fans.

“I didn’t know you were a Royals fan,” I said, nodding toward his cap.

“I’m not,” Ian said. “I just hate the Blue Jays.”

Fast forward to Wednesday night. Once again, I had to pop over to Ian’s place, hours after the Jays had been eliminated.

He came to the door wearing a Cleveland cap.

I commented on what a dedicated Jays-hater he must be, to have purchased a Royals cap last year and a Cleveland cap this year.

Ian explained that he didn’t just purchase them. He has access to 29 caps in his home. No matter who is playing the Jays, he has the cap he needs to root against them.

The Jays are now out of the postseason, and I imagine Ian has completely lost interest in baseball.

Nonetheless, the Cubs and Dodgers were at it in Game 5 of the NLCS last night. The Cubs won 8-4, blowing it wide open with a five-run eighth inning that included a three-run double by Javier Baez.

Ready for the Red Bulls

The Vancouver Whitecaps head into next February’s CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals as the top seed, and now they know their opponent: The New York Red Bulls. That was determined last night in a match between two Latin American clubs you’ve probably never heard of.

Last night’s other CCL match, between FC Dallas and Guatemala’s Suchitepéquez, featured one of the more spectacular red-card offences we’ve seen in a while:

Suchitepéquez’s René Maltes was the guilty party.

Gridiron at Twickers

The Los Angeles Rams are hosting the New York Giants this weekend at the hallowed west London rugby ground of Twickenham. I love it when the Brits write about football, because you get lines like this:

The Giants also sport a 3-3 record, having lost three in a row before victory against the Baltimore Ravens last weekend stopped the rot.

One wonders whether the Rams might score at the death and go top of the table.

The NFL’s ratings problem

As a lukewarm NFL fan at best, I can appreciate David Roth’s theory as to why the league’s broadcast ratings are down this year: Because the games have not been good. His piece gets at the thing that really has prevented me from becoming a bigger NFL fan:

Most of what happens during the three or so hours of the average NFL broadcast ranges from not good to actively bad, and the art of watching a football game is in tuning all that out however you can.

And as bad as it is in the NFL, it’s worse in the CFL. The action in the CFL is better. The spaces between the action are much, much worse.

Fake punt fail

BYU had a truly terrible fake-punt attempt last night against Boise State. They were on fourth-and-19 from their own five-yard line.

Afterward, they were still on their five-yard line but they were on defence. They lost 28-27.

Rebranding is a varsity sport

The Canadan Interuniversity Athletics Union (CIAU) rebranded itself 15 years ago as Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), but I guess that wasn’t sexy enough because it rebranded again yesterday as U Sports. Here’s the new logo:

Iconic porn-sounding sports names

Vice’s Dave Lozo recently tweeted a picture of New Jersey Devils winger Miles Wood along with a challenge to name a more iconic porn name in sports. Now that there have been some replies, we’ll go to the polls:

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